Save Jos Buttler (23 off 10 balls) at the top of the order, none of other Royals batsmen looked the part as CSK skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni's immaculate reading of the track once again helped the defending champions.
Coming to the chase, Dhoni-led Chennai faced some early blows. Opener Watson, who has not been in good form, was bowled by Kulkarni for a duck. Soon after, Archer got a stunning direct hit at the non-strikers end to dismiss and shock Raina at the same time as he was running quite casually, not expecting a spot on direct hit. After this, CSK were 5/2 as Rayudu walked to bat. However, Unadkat struck again to take out Faf and put Chennai in big trouble as they were 15/3 after four overs.
Chennai were in great trouble after losing four wickets that too in a power-play and RR’s Ben Stokes ensured that his squad completely dominate the visitors by taking the Catch of IPL 2019.
It seemed that Rajasthan Royals’s Ben stokes was almost flying in the air as he stretched to the fullest to grab the most unreal catch of IPL 2019. With just having milliseconds to dive, Stokes jumped to perfection to pull off a stunning catch and dismiss CSK’s star batsman Kedar Jadhav in the last bowl of the fifth over by Jofra Archer.
Earlier, Left-arm spin duo Ravindra Jadeja (2/20 in 4 overs) and Mitchell Santner (1/25 in 4 overs) checked the run-flow as Royals batsmen were always playing a catch-up game.
It was Shreyas Gopal, who struck a few meaty blows en route his 19 off 7 balls to take the target past 150 despite the home team playing as many as 42 dot balls.